Hope Meets Hype

This is the hardest kind of story for me to write. It's about a real advance in basic research on Alzheimer's. I know all too well that there are millions of people desperate for news of a treatment or a cure for this terrible disease. I also know that it can take five years or more for basic research--which is to say, experiments performed in test tubes or on laboratory animals--to be turned into safe and effective drugs. And that's only if there are no major setbacks or surprises. More often than not, these big advances in basic research don't go...